


Self-Reliance

by blackash26



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Child Neglect, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 10:58:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/686173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackash26/pseuds/blackash26
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So somehow Charles gets turned into a kid/baby. While the team scrabble to work out how to put him right they try to look after him. Turns out, Charles doesn't need much looking after. If he's a baby, he never cries. If he's a little kid, he's really self-sufficient.</p>
<p>Everyone's charmed/amused by this except one person (I vote Sean - being the walking, stoned Irish Catholic stereotype that he is in the film he probably has a big family) who is really unnerved by this. All babies cry. Kids that age are not that independent - they're just not. Unless they're used to nothing happening when they cry/used to fending for themselves.</p>
<p>When he's returned to normal, they question Charles about this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Self-Reliance

**Author's Note:**

> A de-anon of an old fill from 1stclass_kink.
> 
> Also, not meant to be character bashing, but the kids are kind of mad at their dead beat father and don’t bother hiding it. I love Erik! They just hate him right now.

The one thing they agreed on after the initial panic had passed was that they weren't going to call Erik, that traitorous bastard. (They all refused to admit at least in part that they wished he’d show up anyway, that maybe now when they really needed him, he’d come through.)

That was the only thing they agreed on. After all, what did three young males and a handful of preteens know about raising a toddler?

They spent most of the first day running around like chickens with their heads cut off, doing their best to keep the kids calm and the school running while keeping an obsessive eye on Charles. And although the Professor really had been an adorable child, once upon a time, they all wished he could get on with being an adult again.

None of them knew for sure how long they would be able to keep things afloat without the Professor to guide them, but they couldn’t afford to panic.

Hank was standing in for the Professor. (The vote had been two against one, majority rule. Hank now hated Democracy with a burning passion.) Alex had been put in charge of baby proofing the mansion, digging Charles’ baby clothing out of the attic and playing second in command whenever Hank was busy trying to come up with a cure. Sean, the only one of them who knew anything about small children since he had four younger siblings and thirteen younger cousins, was put in charge of the downsized telepath.

Everyone loved Charles. He was a darling blue-eyed angel with floppy brown hair and Sean had to go out of his way to keep Jean and Ororo from kidnapping the boy and dressing him up in all sort of horribly unmanly ensembles. Not that Charles would have minded. As far as anyone could tell, Charles never complained about anything. To be fair, though, the boy hardly ever spoke at all. He could talk, after a fashion, in the way that small children do. But while Sean occasionally heard Charles prattling to himself, the boy never said anything to anyone else unless directly spoken to.

Everyone commented on how well behaved the Professor had always been, even as a child.

“It’s like he isn’t even there sometimes,” Alex would joke and they would all laugh.

Sean also thought it was funny and cute, at least at first he did. But then he went and lost the Professor for _four_ hours.  
One minute the Mini-Professor had been there, playing silently with a raggedy old bear that Alex had dug out of storage, and then he was gone. Sean had turned the mansion upside down looking for him, but hadn’t found him. He didn’t say anything to the others, worried about what they might say; about how he’d so clearly let them all down when they needed him most. He knew he wasn’t as responsible as the others and that had always gotten him into his fair share of trouble in the past. But loosing Charles was something else entirely. Everyone was relying on him to take care of the Professor. This was possibly the most important thing they’d ever asked of him and he was going to fuck it up. 

He almost gave himself an ulcer with his worry before he finally found Charles.

He’d found the boy, at last, sitting in one of the many bathrooms in the mansion attempting to bandage his scraped knee. Sean had immediately offered to help. Charles had stared at him with wide, puzzled eyes, but let him take over. Afterward, Sean asked Charles where he went and why he hadn’t asked for help when he got hurt.

The boy shrugged. “M’as playing,” he said. “M’ a bother, not seen, not heard is best.”

By the time Sean made sense of Charles’ answer, the boy had already crawled off. Only then did Sean realize that despite the obvious pain he’d been in, Charles hadn’t cried or even once complained about his scrape.

And that was when a niggling feeling began to grow in the back of Sean’s mind. 

Sean wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he kept his eyes peeled. Once he started looking, though, he started to see what had been there all along.

He realized almost immediately that while all little kids were different; he’d seen enough toddlers to know that Charles should not have been so calm about being surrounded by complete strangers. And, perhaps more worrying, Charles hadn’t once asked where his parents were or when they were coming home.

The niggling feeling grew and he wondered why no one else had remarked on this strange behavior.

He wasn’t exactly as brilliant as Hank, but the answer came to him pretty quickly regardless. It was hard for everyone to remember that Charles had had a life before he became their Professor. They couldn’t imagine him as a child, as someone needing care and love and affection and had no real experience with kids, anyway. They saw the way the Professor acted and assumed it was because he was the Professor. Why on earth would they think anything different?

Sean didn’t say anything; he didn’t want raise any false alarms. Though he wasn’t exactly sure what kind of alarms he’d be raising. It wasn’t like Charles flinched when they touched him; he just seemed perpetually surprised when anyone paid him any mind at all.

Sean continued watching.

He watched the younger Mutants play with Charles. He saw Charles’ confusion, first at the attention, and then at the games. The child hadn’t known a single one, though he’d learned each one quickly and seemed to enjoy them once he understood what was being asked of him.

He watched Charles teaching himself to walk when no one was around, holding himself up on furniture and taking careful wobbling steps with quiet determination. He watched Charles fall again and again, and never once ask for help. When Charles finally made it across the room by himself and Sean had rushed over to give the boy a hug, Charles had stared at him like he was crazy.

There were other, subtler things.

Charles put himself to sleep at night. Charles never asked for anything. Never asked to be read to, never asked to be carried, never asked for attention. He never made messes, either. Charles didn’t understand the concept of the family style dinners that his older self had instituted as a mandatory bonding time and Sean usually had to go and get him from where he waited patiently in the kitchen for someone to remember to give him a plate of food.

There was definitely something wrong and Sean didn’t know what to do.

He could tell the others, should tell them, really, but the Professor might not be a child forever. Would the Professor want them to know? Probably not. The Professor had never mentioned it before, after all. He vaguely recalled that traitorous, bullet flinging maniac making some stupid comment about Charles’ upbringing. Charles had shrugged and Raven had made a pithy comment. That had been it.

Sean thought of a two year old who was so self-sufficient that he set his own bed times and wished he knew what rock Erik was hiding under so that he could go scream in his ear and shatter his eardrums.

The Professor, if he were himself, would probably not appreciate that attitude, Sean knew, but didn't care.

After a lot of thinking, Sean decided to keep Charles’ secret. It wasn’t his to tell. But he made a point of staying close to Charles. He hugged the boy often and made sure never to leave him alone. He encouraged Charles to ask all the questions he obviously had about everything and refused to let himself regret the inquisitive monster he’d unleashed. His favorite innovation by far was story time, though that had involved driving out to the public library since the mansion had absolutely no children’s books, and read to a rapt and delighted Charles every night. 

He knew he wasn't fixing anything, not really. But it was all he could think of.

He hoped he was helping somehow.

***

Luckily, whatever Hank had done to Charles was not permanent, and exactly two weeks after the accident, they woke up to their Professor’s very confused mental prodding.

_Why,_ the Professor had asked, _am I sleeping in a crib?_

The Professor took the news of previous downsized state with surprisingly good humor and for once didn’t make a fuss over the boys helping him out. He let Hank lift him out of the crib and bore their help with getting dressed and resettled in his chair with almost uncharacteristic good grace.

They had a big dinner to celebrate Charles’ return. The little ones cheered and swamped the Professor with hugs and kisses while Hank and Alex did their best to fill the Professor in on everything he had missed. Sean smiled a lot, but didn’t say much. He couldn’t help watching, though. Couldn't stop trying to find little Charles somewhere inside the impressive persona of Professor X, their wise and beloved leader.

The Professor caught him looking, of course. Sean was probably thinking too loudly. He might as well be screaming his concern to someone like the Professor considering how loud he was thinking.

After dinner, the Professor called Sean to his office.

Sean went.

“Is everything okay Sean?” Charles asked once he was seated on the other side of the Professor’s desk.

Sean shrugged. He didn’t know what to say.

“Hank was telling me that I have you to thank for taking such good care of me while I was… incapacitated,” the Professor said after a while. 

There was no pressure in the statement. If Sean wanted to he could easily avoid the entire conversation. That was one of the things Sean liked about the Professor. The man never pushed. He was always willing to let Sean come to things in his own time. 

And so, obviously, Sean had to say something. “Yeah…Professor, what was it like, growing up in this house?”

The Professor’s forehead wrinkled in concern. “That’s an odd question, isn’t it?”

“Not really,” Sean said. “It’s just, I’ve never met a toddler who was so used to be ignored that he didn’t even bother throwing tantrums.”

The Professor held himself very still and it took all of Sean’s courage to look his leader in the eyes. He offered up his memories of the past two weeks and felt Charles carefully skim through them.

Charles closed his eyes when he finished and rolled his chair away from the desk so that it was facing the window. Sean wondered if that was meant to be a dismissal, but stayed where he was.

The Professor was quiet for a long time, staring off over the grounds as he had taken to doing since that day on the beach.

“Do…do you want to talk about it, Professor?” Sean asked when he could no longer stand the silence.

The Professor blinked owlishly as though he’d forgotten that he wasn’t alone and turned to look at Sean. “What good does it do to talk about it?” Charles asked. “It’s over and done with, isn’t it?”

Sean shrugged. He wasn’t good at this sort of thing. He caught himself wishing that the Professor was little Charles again so that he could swing him around in the air and give him a hug. “I don’t know,” Sean said. “But maybe it helps.”

Charles’ lips quirked into a half smile and he ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe it does,” he said and rolled himself back over to the desk. “Where should I start?”

The question was out before he even knew what he was asking. “Why did you go to the kitchen for meals?”

The Professor sighed. “By that time, my mother had already started taking her meals in her room and my father, while he was alive was rarely home long enough to say hello, let alone do anything besides lock himself in his study. One of the housemaids was in charge of feeding me, but she’d occasionally forget a meal here or there between her other chores and the rest of the time she dreaded me making another mess she’d need to clean up. I usually ate at a small table set up in the corner of the kitchen. Nothing as terrible as what you seem to have been imagining, Sean.”

“They forgot to feed you?” Sean demanded almost leaping out of chair in anger.

Charles looked honestly confused at Sean’s response. “It’s not really a big deal,” he assured gently. “Many other people have suffered far greater pain than the little discomforts I endured and I’m no worse for wear because of it.”

And now he could see it. _Now_ he could see where the little boy who had hadn’t known what to do when someone hugged him had gone. 

He wanted to rant and rave and somehow make Charles Xavier see sense, but if two weeks of extended babysitting duty had taught him anything, it was that some things took time.

“Yeah, sure. Everyone hurts, right?” Sean said once his anger had settled a little. “But you’re allowed to hurt too, Professor. No one’s gonna hold it against you. I certainly won’t.”

With that Sean got to his feet and walked out of the room as proudly as he could.

“Sean.” The Professor called out to him just before he closed the study door behind him.

“Yeah,” Sean said, glancing over his shoulder at the Professor’s unreadable face.

_Thank you._

Sean nodded in understanding, even though he wasn’t sure exactly what he was being thanked for. “No problem, Professor,” he said and shut the door behind him.

He’d talk more to the Professor about what had happened later. For now, he wanted to reread “Goodnight Moon” one more time before he had to return it the library.


End file.
